Patty LuPone Is My New Hero
I have a cellphone. It's a bright,
shiny iPhone and I never go anywhere without it. That said, I also
have a brain, common sense, and good manners, all of which put me one
up on a lot of cellphone users and abusers.
Okay, in the first place, I'm old. So
old, in fact, that I remember the days before cellphones existed.
Wow. A real dinosaur, huh? Back when I was a radio guy, I actually
carried one of the first portable cellular phones. It was the
mid-'80s and the device was essentially a telephone handset attached
by a curly cord to a huge battery pack. The whole apparatus weighed
ten or fifteen pounds, but, by golly, it was portable. Its major
feature was that it enabled you to make phone calls. And that was its
only feature. It didn't light
up and play loud annoying music. And when you pushed the buttons, you
were dialing a phone number not sending a “text message” because
there was no such thing. Since the Internet did not yet exist – at
least not for the masses – there was no 'net surfing to be done.
All you could do was call somebody. And at a dollar a minute you were
pretty discriminating about making those calls. All in all,
cellphones were rather difficult things to become addicted to.
Enter
the “smartphone.” Whoa! It does everything and
it fits in the palm of your hand. Well, yeah, you have to have pretty
big palms for some of the new ones, but you know what I mean. It's
more than just a telephone, it's a wireless connection to life.
Unfortunately, it's also a
social crutch for people who don't have a
life. The real problem is not with the “smart” phone but rather
with the stupid user. Nowhere is this more evident than in the
theater. Movie theater or live theater, take your pick. 'Net surfing,
game-playing, text messaging morons inhabit both. They are like
alcoholics or drug addicts; they have to get a “fix” or they
start to tremble and shake.
As I
said, I carry my phone with me everywhere. It's on my hip or in my
pocket eighteen hours a day and on a bedside charger the other six.
But just because my phone is constantly attached to me
does not mean I am constantly attached to it. Believe
it or not, I can function without my phone for two or three hours at
a time. The idiots who light the damn things up in darkened theaters
apparently can't function without theirs for two or three minutes.
“I'm
bored.” I'm sorry, but there are worse things in life than being
bored. Being a thoughtless, self-centered, discourteous, entitled
twit, for example. Just because you are self-important enough to
believe that you have to share every moment of your exalted
existence with everyone else on the planet doesn't mean that I have
to watch you do it.
I admit it: when it
comes to theaters, I am an avowed phone Nazi. You light that sucker
up anywhere I can see it......and in a dark room, that's pretty much
everywhere except directly behind me.....and I'm gonna call you out
about it. And I won't be quiet and I won't be polite. Hell, if you're
stupid and rude enough to be flashing your phone around in a room
full of people would couldn't care less about your “right” to do
so, I'm stupid and rude enough to make sure you and everybody else
knows it. After all, you've already disrupted everybody's enjoyment
with your stupidity so my yelling, “Put that damn thing away”
isn't likely to disturb anybody any more than they've already been
disturbed, right?
Most
of my bad phone experiences lately have been in movie theaters, but
live theater gets its share of the boorish, ignorant, loutish
behavior as well. And that's where I'd like to introduce you to my
newest hero, Patti LuPone. To begin with, the multi-talented,
multi-award-winning actress is Italian. Score one. And she's got a
definite handle on how to deal with inconsiderate boobs who think
they are the alpha and the omega of all things in life.
A couple of years ago, during a Broadway performance of “Gypsy,” she stopped the show......literally.....to take down an idiot snapping pictures. What part of the standard pre-show announcement “the taking of photographs and use of recording devices is forbidden by law” don't these goobers get? Or is it that they are so important that the rules don't apply to them. They paid for their tickets, dammit, so they can do anything they want. Or so their pea-brained logic dictates.
A couple of years ago, during a Broadway performance of “Gypsy,” she stopped the show......literally.....to take down an idiot snapping pictures. What part of the standard pre-show announcement “the taking of photographs and use of recording devices is forbidden by law” don't these goobers get? Or is it that they are so important that the rules don't apply to them. They paid for their tickets, dammit, so they can do anything they want. Or so their pea-brained logic dictates.
Recently, Patti was performing in “Show
of Days” at New York's Lincoln Center. And there's this clueless
airhead sitting in full view of both the audience and the stage
texting blithely away throughout the entire first act. And when she
started up again after intermission, Patti handled it. She simply
stepped through the actor's imaginary “fourth wall” and snatched
the phone right out of the miscreant's hand. Yaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy,
Patti! Way to go, girl!! (Unfortunately, the fool got her phone back after the show. If I'd have been Patti, I'd have done my best Peter Frampton imitation and hurled the thing into the rafters.)
"There's an arrogance and defiance
to these people," Patti said. "I think it's gone too far.
Audiences are as upset as actors. It's only between two and four
people a night, but the minute [a phone] goes off or a screen turns
on, your attention is shattered."
Shattering an audience member's
attention in a play is annoying. Shattering an actor's attention can
be dangerous. Been there, done that. You might be up there doing
something tricky or intricate that demands your full attention and
here comes some clod with a camera or a blazingly bright cellphone
screen exercising his “right” to ignore whatever rules don't suit
him. You lose focus and somebody loses an eye or something. And “Miss
Entitled To The Full Experience” is right there to record it and/or
text it to all her Facebook “friends.”
And it ain't real safe to piss off an
audience member in a movie theater, either. Hey, I'll just yell at
you. Remember the fella in Florida awhile back who pulled a gun and
put an abrupt and final end to some guy's texting? You never know.
You may be ignorant and rude, but somebody else could be just plain
nuts and possessed of a really short fuse. Personally, even though
it's probably in bad taste, I think that instead of putting up polite
“reminders” on the screen or showing funny clips of a camel
saying, “It's movie d-a-a-a-a-y!,” theaters ought to consider
just posting that dude's mug shot up there. Might get the point
across.
I don't get it. A person shells out
between ten and twenty bucks for a movie ticket or an average of
about a hundred bucks for a Broadway show, and then they sit there
and “entertain” themselves by playing games or texting friends
for two hours? What's the point? Why not just stay home? Does
everybody born in the Information Age have ADHD that they can't sit
for two minutes without checking their frickin' phone? And if the
show is that bad, get up and leave. You can probably get your money
back and the rest of us will be glad you're gone.
Of course, the real problem is there's
no enforcement of the rules, so rule benders don't take them
seriously. I've been in movie houses where they actually sent in an
employee before the show to make a deadly serious announcement about
cellphone use. Then the employee left, the movie screen lit up....and
so did the cellphones. These cretinous clowns know that theaters
can't afford to station “phone police” in every auditorium, and
since they don't really give a flying flip about anybody's “rights”
other than their own right of self-entertainment, they don't care.
They just light up and go about their business. If you don't like it,
well, bad on you.
The problem's not going to go away
until the industry gets serious about it. In live theater, Patti
LuPone says it's not fair that performers have to play the bad guy
when it comes to cellphone abuse. "I'm a hired actor – it's
not my job.” She says the actors complain to the stage managers,
then the stage managers go to the house managers and the house
mangers go to the ushers, who may or may not be able to effectively
deal with the issue. “It falls on us to be the police," Patti
says.
Same thing applies in movie theaters.
Aggrieved patrons can get up and go out to the lobby – missing half
the movie they paid ridiculous amounts to see – and try to find a
manager. That manager will then likely instruct some teenage usher to
go in and take care of the problem. Riiiiiight. If that works at all,
it will only work until about sixteen seconds after the usher has
left the vicinity. Patti has the ultimate solution: "They should
just eject you with no refund." Then you can stand outside the
theater and text all your “friends” about how badly you were
treated.
Let me try to give you clueless nitwits a clue. Sure, you paid big bucks for a ticket. But guess what? So did a couple hundred other people. People who aren't just hanging out in your living room, you know? People who actually want to see what they paid their big bucks for. And that doesn't include being distracted by the strobe-like flashing of your phone every ten seconds, something that happens because you don't have the brains, the manners, or the self-control to think about the other people with whom you share living space on this planet.
Let me try to give you clueless nitwits a clue. Sure, you paid big bucks for a ticket. But guess what? So did a couple hundred other people. People who aren't just hanging out in your living room, you know? People who actually want to see what they paid their big bucks for. And that doesn't include being distracted by the strobe-like flashing of your phone every ten seconds, something that happens because you don't have the brains, the manners, or the self-control to think about the other people with whom you share living space on this planet.
Get a life, spoiled simpleton. Or at least get
some sense of perspective. Unless you're a doctor on call or some
sort of emergency responder, you're just not so important that you
can't afford to be “out of touch” for a couple of hours. And if
by some legitimate chance you are expecting an important call or
message, take a seat on the back row where the luminescence of your
phone screen won't provide a blinding distraction to everybody seated
behind you. Surely nobody is so oblivious as to think that sitting in
the front or middle rows of a dark theater auditorium and then
effectively turning on a flashlight is not going to bother the people
sitting in the seats behind them. If you've got to
be on your phone, whether for reasons legitimate or narcissistic, for
cryin' out loud, sit in the back where
you'll only piss off the people on either side of you. And hope that
none of them has a short fuse and a gun.
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